We are social creatures, animals who create and maintain only as long as others like us are willing to provide emotional, spiritual and physical support. Now, at the microcosmic level of understanding, we can denote how groups interact with one another, but this is our Valentine’s Day issue, and frankly, when one encounters the romantic discourse, the gaze of the observer’s magnifying glass desires to focus, to zoom in to the level of one-on one-interactions: relationships.

Now, while I could write a 50 page essay on the harm of romanticism within postmodern America, I recognize that many students find Valentine’s Day to have some sort of value greater than the profit margins of Hallmark and See’s Candies, so I acknowledge the romantic impulse and delve into the dynamics of a person-to-person relationship and what makes it good.

Sacramento State Alumni, Dang Hoang said that having a good relationship required “At least two things: loyalty and sense of adventure. Loyalty is important because you have to trust someone to do anything with them. You have to trust a person to talk to them, tell them your name. Tell them the things you like, that you’re about, your goals in life.”

As for a sense of adventure, “You got to always try new things to keep things interesting. When you try new things, you discover new ways to learn about each other,” Hoang said.

Senior, Jamie Jackson and pre-physical therapy major said that a good relationship requires honesty.

“Telling the other person what you actually feel and being there when they need you, and putting them first when they need you. Being willing to be the shoulder to cry to, or the person to laugh to,” Jackson said.

As for Christopher Rayo Zagala, a sophomore, business major, he acknowledged that trust and “all that stuff” was a factor, but Zagala emphasized that compatibility as some kind of common element.

So let’s tally it up: So far, we have honesty, loyalty, a sense of adventure and compatibility. And I believe that all of these are factors in what makes a good relationship, hmm, interesting. Something is coming out of this. But it’s not being said directly. I feel that there is this something broader, something more essential that ties all of these ideas together and I believe that Allan Paningbatan, a sophomore business major, comes the closest to what I see as the connective tissue from which a relationship can thrive.

“Friends,” Paningbatan said, “are the ones who know everything about you, but still like you. Even your little things that they don’t care about, they’re just cool with who you are.”

So what is it that I find insightful in Paningbatan’s quote, other than it’s a generally warm and fluffy, feel-good attitude? It recognizes a state of intimacy that has to be attained. And intimacy cannot be attained just because you know someone is honest, or has your interests, or has a sense of adventure.

Serial killers can be honest. Some may like to read as much as I enjoy reading, and they probably have a Hell of a sense of adventure, but the key is: would I want to spend time enough with them to get to know their nuances?

Yes, I know. Gag. Is this really what you led us here for? To tell us “time” is the most important thing? Big deal. Why the hell did you waste my time?

But I ask, how do we define time? Do we define it as the total amount of minutes we keep in contact with someone we care for? Do phone minutes, instant messenger chats and the time we spend thinking about them, count towards our total? To bastardize a line from the poet Josephine Jacobsen, “That is not real time.”

We are animals. When we eat, we must digest. When our lungs breathe, they must absorb oxygen and it must travel through our blood stream. When our neurons fire messages across our bodies, it takes time before they can fire again. What I mean to say is that things take time to move into our bodies.

Love at first sight is a shallow, Romantic Age-perpetuated lie. Intimacy is a part of love, and intimacy isn’t how badly you want to have sex with someone anymore than it’s the cacophony of a person’s ideals. A person doesn’t grow to love virtues or a toned slab of six-packed, Olympic tight-wearing meat, or even the ideal combination of the two, the embodiment of the Greek ideal, the statue of David stretching the very form of arete.

We learn to love others when we discover not what they think, but how they think, not what they feel but how it is they come to feel it. When we can name not just the words, but that tone of voice which will trigger our loved ones to anger, joy or laughter. And yes, communication, honesty, and being willing to try new things is a part of the whole experience.

But all too often we neglect the importance of time, because we can cover so much ground, but to take a step in the soil with another, to have a face-to-face discussion, to see them smile, to smell them, to touch, ah, to touch…that is real time.

Frank Loret de Mola can be reached at [email protected]